Its FTA with China is good for the Maldives

Only days after the Maldives' new government came to power, it has said it will pull out of a free trade agreement with China because it was a mistake for such a small country to sign such a deal with the world's second-largest economy.

Mohamed Nasheed, the chief of the Maldivian Democratic Party, which leads the ruling federal alliance, cited the huge trade imbalance between the two countries and called the FTA a "oneway treaty" that only benefits China.

The deal, the first of its kind for the Maldives, was signed during former president Abdulla Yameen's state visit to Beijing last December after two years of negotiations. It removed the trade barriers between the two countries as it cut the tariffs on more than 95 percent of goods to zero, and opened up the "world's largest consumer market" to goods from the Maldives, particularly fishery products, which are its main exports.